Warning
This is A PREVIEW for NEST 3.0 and NOT an OFFICIAL RELEASE! Some functionality may not be available and information may be incomplete!
noise_generator – Device to generate Gaussian white noise current¶
Description¶
This device can be used to inject a Gaussian “white” noise current into a node.
The current is not really white, but a piecewise constant current with Gaussian distributed amplitude. The current changes at intervals of dt. dt must be a multiple of the simulation step size, the default is 1.0 ms, corresponding to a 1 kHz cut-off. Additionally a second sinusodial modulated term can be added to the standard deviation of the noise.
The current generated is given by
where \(N_j\) are Gaussian random numbers with unit standard deviation and \(t_0\) is the device onset time. If the modulation is added the current is given by
For a detailed discussion of the properties of the noise generator, please see noise_generator notebook included in the NEST source code.
Remarks:
All targets receive different currents.
The currents for all targets change at the same points in time.
The interval between changes, dt, must be a multiple of the time step.
The effect of this noise current on a neuron depends on dt. Consider the membrane potential fluctuations evoked when a noise current is injected into a neuron. The standard deviation of these fluctuations across an ensemble will increase with dt for a given value of std. For the leaky integrate-and-fire neuron with time constant \(\tau_m\) and capacity \(C_m\), membrane potential fluctuations Sigma at time \(t_j+delay\) are given by
\[\begin{split}\Sigma = std * \tau_m / C_m * \sqrt( (1-x) / (1+x) ) \\ \text{where } x = exp(-dt/\tau_m)\end{split}\]for large \(t_j\). In the white noise limit, \(dt \rightarrow 0\), one has
\[\Sigma \rightarrow std / C_m * \sqrt(dt * \tau / 2).\]
To obtain comparable results for different values of dt, you must adapt std.
As the noise generator provides a different current for each of its targets, the current recorded represents the instantaneous average of all the currents computed. When there exists only a single target, this would be equivalent to the actual current provided to that target.
Parameters¶
The following parameters can be set in the status dictionary:
mean |
pA |
Mean value of the noise current |
std |
pA |
Standard deviation of noise current |
dt |
ms |
Interval between changes in current, default 1.0ms |
std_mod |
pA |
Modulated standard deviation of noise current |
phase |
real |
Phase of sine modulation (0-360 deg) |
frequency |
Hz |
Frequency of sine modulation |
Sends¶
CurrentEvent